pen, many things were
Worship! To the primeval man whatsoever good came, descended on
him (as, in mere fact, it ever does) direct from God; whatsoever
duty lay visible for him, this a Supreme God had prescribed. To
the present hour I ask thee, Who else? For the primeval man, in
whom dwelt Thought, this Universe was all a Temple; Life
everywhere a Worship.

'What Worship, for example, is there not in mere Washing!
Perhaps one of the most moral things a man, in common cases, has
it in his power to do. Strip thyself, go into the bath, or were
it into the limpid pool and running brook, and there wash and be
clean; thou wilt step out again a purer and a better man. This
consciousness of perfect outer pureness, that to thy skin there
now adheres no foreign speck of imperfection, how it radiates in
on thee, with cunning symbolic influences, to thy very soul!
Thou hast an increase of tendency towards all good things
whatsoever. The oldest Eastern Sages, with joy and holy
gratitude, had felt it so,--and that it was the Maker's gift and
will. Whose else is it? It remains a religious duty, from
oldest times, in the East.--Nor could Herr Professor Strauss,
when I put the question, deny that for us at present it is still
such here in the West! To that dingy fuliginous Operative,
emerging from his soot-mill, what is the first duty I will
prescribe, and offer help towards? That he clean the skin of
him. _Can_ he pray, by any ascertained method? One knows not
entirely:--but with soap and a sufficiency of water, he can wash.
Even the dull English feel something of this; they have a
saying, "Cleanliness is near of kin to Godliness:"--yet never, in
any country, saw I operative men worse washed, and, in a climate
drenched with the softest cloud-water, such a scarcity of
baths!'--Alas, Sauerteig, our 'operative men' are at present
short even of potatoes: what 'duty' can you prescribe to them!

Or let us give a glance at China. Our new friend, the Emperor
there, is Pontiff of three hundred million men; who do all live
and work, these many centuries now; authentically patronised by
Heaven so far; and therefore must have some 'religion' of a
kind. T his Emperor-Pontiff has, in fact, a religious belief of
certain Laws of Heaven; observes, with a religious rigour, his
'three thousand punctualities,' given out by men of insight, some
sixty generations since, as a legible transcript of the same,--
the Heavens do seem to s